Print Size: 18" x 24" (Frame Size 18" x 24")
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow likened Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse to a “beautiful stone canon, mouth upward, belching forth only friendly fires.” To Helen Keller it “seemed to rise out of tranquil waters, like Venus from her morning bath.” Both poetic notions belie the heroic achievement of this lighthouse on the infamous Cohasset Rocks a mile offshore Scituate, Massachusetts. Until the tower’s construction a dozen or more ships sank here annually, more than anywhere else in New England. Barely 20 feet wide and most often submerged, the ledge defined construction as in 1850 when an openwork iron tower, pinned to solid rock during two years of construction, washed away just months after active service. Success finally came under the personal direction of Brigadier General Joseph Totten, Chief Army Engineer, who used his fortifications expertise to dovetail granite blocks reinforced by iron shafts on a solid granite based anchored directly into the reef. (This print compares the system with the stone construction of other lighthouses built on reefs in the open sea.) Effectively one giant rock, the tower was hollowed out only to provide storage, a 50-book library, and living quarters for two keepers – many of whom lost their lives, or minds, to the pounding sea.
